Education, Education, Education review: Timely comment on how schools are affected by political change

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Henry Hitchings6 June 2019

Remember May 1997? The Labour Party’s landslide election victory? The moment at three in the morning when Michael Portillo lost his seat to a ­beaming Stephen Twigg? The stony face of John Prescott as D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better filled the Festival Hall?

This bittersweet show from the Wardrobe Ensemble, a company who specialise in irreverent explorations of serious subjects, takes us back to that heady time.

It’s set in a struggling comprehensive, where the staff are jubilant, buoyed by Tony Blair’s campaign promise that his priorities in office will be “education, education, education”.

German language assistant Tobias, who’s mysteriously arrived only for the final term of the school year, is fascinated by Cool Britannia. Played with mischievous camp by James Newton, he’s a sucker for the Spice Girls and Take That.

But he detects sour undercurrents in the staff room, and resentments soon flare up, sparked by a student (Emily Greenslade) who’s been denied the chance to go on an outing to York and stages an increasingly edgy protest. Directed by Jesse Jones and Helena Middleton, this 70-minute piece is packed with droll Nineties references. There’s even some amusingly daft business with a Tamagotchi, which becomes an object of demented fascination for Ben Vardy’s unappreciated PE teacher.

Yet this isn’t really a nostalgia trip. Instead it’s a timely comment on the way schools and those who work in them are affected by political change. The characters are mostly stereotypes, and the material never has quite enough room to breathe.

But even if a few of the jokes are limp, it’s an inventive show — full of outrageous dance routines, and delivered with a deliberately chaotic energy.

Until June 29

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